It is important to realize that one of the major issues in discussing any topic is who is creating the divisions and standards of literacy. It seems that the boundaries are set by a small group of academics who are not diverse in their thoughts. Therefore their narrow ideas are translated into society's general views on literacy creating a distorted outlook of what literacy is. This is typified in the standardized testing of the SAT's and the IQ tests. It has been argued that these tests are written for white males and are biased by both gender and race. This point is made very clear in the discrepancies of scores between whites and other minorities that take the test. Literacy also fails in that it is very dependent on culture and dialect. A person who lives in the rural country or a African-American teenager who lives in the inner city speak dialect that is considered not being standard written English. This leads to the problem of creating a language that measures both groups intelligence while also making a standard of testing that is able to compare individuals from different groups against one another. This also leads to the question as to what is an accurate predictor of intelligence and what is meant by intelligence.
As one can see, defining a person¹s intelligence is a very subjective area of thought. One can make the argument that the verbal SAT is nothing more than an over glorified vocabulary test that places little emphasis on the comprehension and interpretation of literature. Much of the knowledge that is tested is not truly a predictor of potential intelligence. This can be related to literacy by the fact that there is only a small group that tests for literacy, and that these tests can easily be seen as favoring one minority over another. Minorities can be defined by race, sex or even occupation. This is the major problem of literacy. It can be defined as being either functional or a measure of grace. Literacy means different things to different individuals and must be constantly redefined to fit all groups.
A mechanical engineer's definition of literacy might be limited to being able to read manuals and do problem sets, while an creative writing major might tend to be more focused on the semantics of words. Both definitions are correct for the individual, but are nevertheless different. This is why it is so hard to build a consistent, uniform definition for literacy.
Unfortunately the small team of people who define literacy are also academics, meaning that there is the distinct possibility of alienating themselves from the general public. This can lead to the problem of snobbery. A person might be functionally literate, but still be considered illiterate by definition. A person who is very rural might have very little need to read beyond what might be considered an elementary school level. This might be because their life's priorities are different from the average academic.
Academic people tend to be snobbish when it comes to intelligence, thinking less of those who cannot read or write, however the correlation between intelligence and literacy as well as happiness and literacy are also subjective. A person's happiness is not dependent on their ability to read. It is incredibly arrogant to think that one is smarter or happier because of the social skill of literacy. A person might be completely content with their life as is, and has no desire to be deemed "literate".
This is analogous to Plato's story "The Parable of the Cave," in which a hypothetical society dwells in a cave. They are all prisoners, and bound by chains and forced to stare at a cave wall. On this wall shadows are being cast, and the prisoners believe these images to be their true reality. One day one of the prisoners breaks free of their chains and turns their head. The prisoner sees a wall with several objects on it, the prisoner then believes that the objects and not the shadows are true reality. Finally the prisoner gathers enough courage to venture out of the cave and makes it out to the forest, the prisoner sees the sun that shines the light that streams into the cave that casts the shadows on the wall of the cave. The prisoner goes back into the cave and tells his fellow captives of cave of the incredible experience outside of the cave. He tells them that the shadow that they see are not the true reality. He tries to persuade the prisoners to break their chains and see the world with him. The prisoners are unwilling to believe him and are content living in their world of shadows. The enlightened one cannot force his peers to go out with him, yet he is never again happy living inside the cave, because he realizes the other aspects of the world and can never again accept mere shadows.
This story can of course be compared as seeing the academics as the enlightened ones and the common manual worker who is happy to live in their world although they are oblivious to other aspects of the "literary" world. They are happy because they do not miss what they have never had. It is arrogant to believe that one who is not exposed to literacy is less happy than one that is a true academic.
In today's world as technology increases, a person's dependence on the written word has decreased. As contradictory as this sounds, it is true. As we become more dependent on computers and television as mediums, it seem as if the written word has lost its power. It seems as though everything can be reduced to visual images or audio clips. Nothing truly needs to be in writing. Books are on audio tape or adapted into cinema. Newspapers are becoming obsolete with television news and on-line news. Everything seems to be able reduced into diagrams or explained verbally. Therefore a person can truly be socially functional literate in an industrialized world with out being cultured. This could explain the many illiterate people in this world that are not defined as being rural or manual laborers.
Society's perceptions of intelligence are as varied as the individuals are. We rank different types of intelligence by our definition of literacy. Once a definition is established, a method for testing literacy is the next step. In society today literacy is measured by scores on standardized tests. This method is an extremely poor for method for several reasons. Since jobs are becoming increasingly specialized, an individual's knowledge must also become more specialized to keep up with the rest of people in his or her field. An individual's score will not reflect the amount of specialized knowledge in his or her field. So if literacy is defined as specialized knowledge, this test fails to show valid results. On the other hand literacy could be defined as a general knowledge. But still these standardized test are still not a good indicator. The SAT's consist of two sections. The English section has a large vocabulary section which consists of words that are rarely used in everyday conversation. Similarly the mathematics section contains many concepts that are rarely used in everyday activities. This test fails to test your general knowledge, because the questions on the test do not refer to general knowledge. No matter which definition of literacy is established, general or specialized, these tests do a poor job of evaluating an individual's literacy.
Literacy is a very ambiguous topic that presents itself as being very well defined. The major flaws in discussing this area can be seen through the difficulties in agreeing upon such issues as intelligence, functionality and standardization. These problems all arise from the fact that people perceive things in different ways, leading to conflict on everything that is discussed. It is impossible to diagnose and treat a problem such as literacy when there are many various theories as to what literacy actually is. Another question that has yet be resolved is the entire idea of whether or not illiteracy is even a problem that needs to be addressed. This is because it is unclear as to if it is absolutely necessary to be considered functionally literate in order to be an intelligent, productive and happy member of society. Until a universal method of measurement of literacy can be implemented, it is naive to think that one can generically label an individual as being literate or non-literate. Other factors such as race, religion, gender and occupation must be incorporated in order to create a way in which literacy can be effectively measured in a completely equitable manner.